Groovy times with the Stewardess file (photos)

These smiling ladies are showing off the new blue stewardess uniforms that debuted on TWA in 1939. Little did they know that this would be the last time for the next three decades that any female flight attendant would be captured on film with a hemline that falls below mid-thigh.

Did I mention that I found the file marked “Stewardesses” in the Chronicle photo morgue? At the risk of sounding a little sexist, I don’t think I can look a Southwest flight attendant with anything but disappointment ever again. I can’t wait to finish my time machine, so I can pick up Dan Wylie in 1978, head straight to the airport on April 6, 1966, and hope Don Draper doesn’t beat us there.

-Peter Hartlaub

Special to the Chronicle

April 5, 1966: According to the caption: “United stewardess trainee Ruth Duffey of San Diego assumes protective position in crash landing training.” Good thing that baby is a plastic doll, because if there’s a crash landing, Ruth and the kid are both flying straight up into the overhead baggage compartment. I think in these situations, it would make more sense to have Ruth strap in to a seat and put the baby in the beverage cart. One more reason I fly Southwest.

Special to the Chronicle

April 6, 1966: Sharon Pawson tries out the new-fangled PA system for Pacific Southwest Airlines; that airline operated from the 1940s to the 1980s. I always wanted to fly PSA as a kid because the planes had a smiling face on the front. I was impressed by the phone at first, but now I’m fixated on the gravity-defying hats on PSA stewardesses in the mid-60s. It looks like someone in coach hit them on the side of a head with a flan.

Special to the Chronicle

April 7, 1966: PSA stewardess Christa Simon holds a magazine (I’m guessing Look), oblivious to the fact that Lechy McLecherouson in the front row is blantantly violating her with his eyeballs. Due to the enormous 1960s hair, this hat is resting a foot from Christa’s actual head. My first guess on how she got it to stay there: Bobby pins. Second guess: Telekinesis.

Associated Press

August 23, 1967: From the caption, which I highly suspect was written by Roger Sterling himself: “Stewardesses from American Airline will be trading in everything but their silver wings as chic fashions replace traditional uniforms for 3,000 girls next month. The girls will even have some leeway with their hemlines. The airline places the ceiling at three inches above the knee.”

Courtesy Pan Am Airways

March 12, 1969: These are from Pan Am airlines, whose fashions and stewardess lifestyle was so legendary that ABC is creating a TV series based on them. Nothing says “I’m about to execute the world’s biggest jewel heist” like a bowler hat and gloves. I do like the boots on the woman in the middle, who I’m 95 percent sure is Amy Poehler’s mom.

Art Frisch/Chronicle 1969

June 11, 1969: These uniforms for Air California, modeled in what looks like the corner of Union Square (note the palm trees in the distance), are about 12 different kids of awesome — but ultimately impractical. I’m not sure how the employee on the right could do her job without getting her pancho in a Bloody Mary every five minutes. Definitely bring back the hats, though. More workforces need to model their uniforms after Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. (Violent crime would drop 30 percent if the San Francisco police dressed like this.)

Associated Press

Sept. 2, 1965: Getting serious for a moment: Most of the above fashions were more than a little sexist, and the rules applied to 1960s flight attendants setting weight limits and banning things like marriage and pregnancy were definitely not legal. These five workers testified in front of a Congress subcommittee about the “Logan’s Run”-like rule on some airlines that required flight attendants to retire at age 32 or 35.

Chris Stewart/Chronicle 1986

March 7, 1986: Marlene Oehler leads a group of TWA flight attendants in a strike line at San Francisco International Airport. I was going to say something about 1980s cabin crew fashions and Dianne Feinstein, but I probably shouldn’t joke. This was a really painful strike that led to a lot of lost jobs and the airline conduct eventually needed Supreme Court review.

Associated Press

May 15, 1930: Here’s a photo of the first flight attendants — a group of registered nurses who worked as crew on a refitted Boeing transport for United Air Lines that left out of SFO. The flight was a San Francisco/Chicago route, and in the beginning flight attendants were all nurses. Included is Ellis Crawford of San Francisco — I believe on the far right. (The next photo in this series is a reunion of these women.)

Special to the Chronicle

May 14, 1965: Here’s a reunion photo of the first flight attendants, taken 35 years later. Note they’re in the same pose and the same places as the previous photo. (One of the crew members had passed away, and another — Ellis Crawford of San Francisco — couldn’t make it to the reunion.) At the top is airline pioneer Ellen Church, who wanted to be a pilot, and reportedly came up with the nurses-on-airplanes idea. More on her in this story.

I hope you enjoyed the photos!

If you have a request for a future archive search, please send it to me on a postcard at:

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C/O Peter Hartlaub

San Francisco Chronicle

901 Mission St.

San Francisco, CA 94103.

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PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of this parenting blog, which admittedly sometimes often has nothing to do with parenting. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub. Your questions answered on VYou at www.vyou.com/peterhartlaub.